Clearing the Holiday Hurdles

All the signs were there. Ragged skeins of wild geese had been quarreling across the autumn skies for days and days. The reds and golds of fall had given way to a handful of brown and palsied leaves rattling on the trees and along the sidewalks. Halloween had passed and merchants throughout the Delaware River Valley, in obedience to the great marketing mandates of our culture, were dusting off the Christmas decorations, the colored lights and wrapping papers. I began to hear the first cries of "White Christmas," "Adeste Fidelis," "Deck the Halls," "Rudolph, the Rednosed Reindeer," and other reminders of the approach of a time with which I could associate neither remembered nor anticipated joy. It did not seem like joy to the world, and it certainly did not seem like joy to me.